But Bergman confessed in 2004 that he could not bear to watch his own films because they made him depressed.

"I become so jittery and ready to cry... and miserable," he said. "I think it's awful," he said in a rare interview on Swedish TV.

Nick James, editor of cinema magazine Sight & Sound, paid tribute to Bergman as "one of the great masters and one of the great humanists of cinema".

"There are very few people of that kind of stature today," he said. "He proved that cinema could be an artform."

And UK Culture Secretary James Purnell described Bergman as "undoubtedly one of the most important and influential film-makers of all time".

Bergman (right) worked closely with cinematographer Sven Nykvist

"His contribution to world cinema across a 60-year career is unsurpassed," he said. "With his lifetime's work he has changed the face of film, but also proved that complex and challenging art can engage a wide audience."

Danish director Bille August said Bergman's death was "a real shock to me because he was the last big director left".

August, who described Bergman as an "incredible, unusually bright person", won the Palme D'Or at Cannes in 1988 and '92.

Bergman wrote the script for one of the winning films, The Best Intentions, basing it on his memories of his parents.

"The three big directors for me were Kurosawa, Fellini and Bergman," August said. "The two others had already passed and now Ingmar has also left us. He leaves a big vacuum behind."

'He gave hope'

These views were shared by Istvan Szabo, the Oscar-winning Hungarian director who worked with Bergman at the European Film Academy.

He told news agency MTI: "The Bergman films are to viewers like the novels of a great novelist, the poems of a great poet or the works of a great drama writer. "

Oscar-winning Polish director Andrzej Wajda described Bergman as creating "great art" and said that for film directors, "he gave hope, a belief, that if we wanted to say something about ourselves, the world would notice that".

The date of the funeral has not yet been set, but will be attended by a close group of friends and family, it was reported.